This has been a great week so far! The rain over the weekend was just enough to get the Little River flowing at a minimal boatable flow. So monday morning started off with a run from the Sinks waterfall to below the Elbow (2.6 mile above the Y or Wye to be correct). On the way home I stopped at LRO to get some line for my new set up (Sage DS2 5wt 9' & Ross reel). They were more than helpful as usual and didn't even charge me for backing. I would have to wait till Tuesday to try it out.

Tuesday and Wednesday I fished Norris before work. I arrived at the weir dam to find Bill from LRO, who helped me the day before with my line. Tuesday was slower than the typical slaughter than has been happening lately. One nice brown broke my 5X line 5 feet from me. I also had the hardest hit I had ever seen but he took my bait & ran. Another lady fishing on the weir caught this nice rainbow than her boyfriend or wife brought over so I could take a pic before it was released.

Today was better for me with the biggest Brown I have ever caught. 18.5 inches left him in the slot limit and to be caught again. It was a nice fight! Here are a couple pics.

I may just have to go back tomorrow as this sport has become addictive!
Good luck fishing!
James Locke

Just a friendly reminder for all of us (me included) that if we are going to release a fish it's best to do so with minimal handling. The key to survival for a fish is their "slime" layer. When we put fish on the ground or rocks for a photo that slime layer is damaged. There have been lots and lots of studies that conclusively show that handling a fish out of the water DRASTICALLY reduces its survival as compared to simply removing the hook, perhaps snapping a quick photo, and gently releasing them back into the water. After they've been out of the water for more than about 30 seconds and have had their slime layer damaged their survival goes way down, even if it looks like they swam away in good shape.

Thanks for sharing and look forward to seeing you on the water! I've been very pleased with the Clinch this year and hope the slots continue to have the desired effect.

Not to be a downer, but I saw something dissapointing at the Clinch last Sunday that I have been thinking about a lot this week. A guy waded up pretty close to me and yelled "are you keeping fish?" I said no. He pulled a stringer out of the water with 4-5 good fish on it and said "do you want these?". I said that I had no way of transporting them home and advised him to take them himself. He said "I can't because my wife doesn't know I was out fishing". I thought to my self, why did you keep a single fish in the first place?

He waded on toward the bank and encountered a friend of mine, who looked at the fish and said that one was a rather large brook trout. The thing that bothered me most of all was that when I glanced at the fish, one of them looked to be in the 14-20 slot.

I am a catch & release guy, so this affects me a little different than most people. I don't have a problem with people who choose to keep fish, and I understand that harvesting fish helps control their population, I just don't care for waste.

Not to be a downer, but I saw something dissapointing at the Clinch last Sunday that I have been thinking about a lot this week. A guy waded up pretty close to me and yelled "are you keeping fish?" I said no. He pulled a stringer out of the water with 4-5 good fish on it and said "do you want these?". I said that I had no way of transporting them home and advised him to take them himself. He said "I can't because my wife doesn't know I was out fishing". I thought to my self, why did you keep a single fish in the first place?

He waded on toward the bank and encountered a friend of mine, who looked at the fish and said that one was a rather large brook trout. The thing that bothered me most of all was that when I glanced at the fish, one of them looked to be in the 14-20 slot.

I am a catch & release guy, so this affects me a little different than most people. I don't have a problem with people who choose to keep fish, and I understand that harvesting fish helps control their population, I just don't care for waste.

How does everyone handle a situation like this?

Grannyknot,
That is quite frustrating, and I don't know how I would have handled it. Some people just deeply believe that it totally defeats the purpose to go fishing without keeping something. Growing up, I would go to the Clinch with my dad, uncle, and neighbor every Saturday. They would all keep a limit each trip because they thought they had to. Eventually I asked my dad why he kept fish every trip if we still have bags of fish in the fridge from previous trips. Shortly after that, he became much more selective in his harvesting and only kept trout when he had an empty freezer.

Some guys in the catch-n-keep crowd honestly think that their fish are not in the slot. A lot of these bait guys don't carry tapes with them to verify that they are legal, so they are just eyeballing it. Most people don't realize how long a 20" fish is.

I spend quite a bit of time on the Clinch. I have no problem with anyone keeping fish as long as they are going about in legally. I have seen everything you can think of except any authority figure. I have NEVER been asked by anyone to see a license or trout stamp.

I volunteered for one of the brookie restoration projects in the park a while back. There were a few TWRA guys there and one of them asked what I thought of the slot limit after finding out where I lived. I explained to him that I felt it was a joke because no one seemed to pay any attention to it. He assured me that his people were down there checking. Again, I have NEVER seen anyone down there. The signs explaining the slot limit are tiny.

grouseman77 - I'm of the same opinion as you. I've seen people (particularly at the weir), keeping fish in the slot. the signs for the slot limit are not noticeable at all. I've fished the clinch all my life and have only been checked or even seen TWRA there ONCE, and that was over 15 years ago.